Robert Frost and feminine literary tradition
By: Karen L. Kilcup.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 322
Subjects: Frost, Robert, 1874-1963 -- Knowledge -- Literature.; Frost, Robert, 1874-1963 -- Characters -- Women.; Frost, Robert, 1874-1963 -- Influence.; Women and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; American poetry -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.); Sentimentalism in literature.; Authorship -- Sex differences.; Sex role in literature.
Description: In spite of Robert Frost's continuing popularity with the public, the poet remains an outsider in the academy, where more "difficult" and "innovative" poets like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound are presented as the great American modernists. Robert Frost and Feminine Literary Tradition considers the reason for this disparity, exploring the relationship among notions of popularity, masculinity, and greatness.

Karen Kilcup reveals Frost's subtle links with earlier "feminine" traditions like "sentimental" poetry and New England regionalist fiction, traditions fostered by such well-known women precursors and contemporaries as Lydia Sigourney, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

She argues that Frost altered and finally obscured these "feminine" voices and values that informed his earlier published work and that to appreciate his achievement fully, we need to recover and acknowledge the power of his affective, emotional voice in counterpoint and collaboration with his more familiar ironic and humorous tones.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
Table of contents: title: Abbreviations; title: Introduction: "Plainly the most deceptive poet"; title: "The faded flowers gay": feminine Frost and the sentimental tradition; title: "The feminine way of it": Frost's homely affiliations; title: "Lightning or a scribble": bewitched by the mother tongue; title: "Button, button; title: ": becoming a man's man; title: "No sissy poem": reinventing the (lyric) poet; title: Coda: "An impregnable harbor for the self"; title: Notes; title: Index.